A Welcome Companion
by David Finlay (24 Jan 06)

If I had kept the Grandis test car for a full year and continued driving it at the same rate, I would have put an extra 50,000 miles on the clock before Mitsubishi saw it again. That might not have gone down too well, and my enthusiasm would certainly have started to wane, but it wouldn't have been too much of an imposition. The Grandis DI-D is one of those cars in which you set out on a long journey with the confident feeling that you won't be too fatigued by the time you reach the tea and buns awaiting you at the other end.

A great deal of the credit for this goes to the engine, which as you'll know if you read our launch reportisn't actually a Mitsubishi unit at all. It's the two-litre turbo diesel built by Volkswagen and fitted to a wide range of VW Group products.

There can be no argument against this. It's a wonderful unit, generally one of the best features of any car that uses it. It has enough power to make so substantial a vehicle as the Grandis perform smartly, yet without excessive use of fuel - over 40mpg, as achieved in the official economy test, is easily within reach.

It's reasonably quiet, too, though I'm glad I've had another opportunity to check this. The first time I drove a diesel Grandis was on a Mitsubishi press event, and the car I drove before that - an hour and a good lunch previously - was the Lancer Evo IX FQ-340. The Evo is one of the noisiest cars you can buy, and after roaring and howling round the countryside in that I was bound to find the Grandis refreshingly peaceful by comparison.

I'm happy to say that, judged on its own, the Grandis is still softly-spoken. The diesel engine barks into life first thing in the morning, but when warmed up and cruising along main roads it calms down nicely. Road and wind noise are well suppressed too, so you're unlikely to hear a ringing noise in your ears at the end of a trip unless you've been playing CDs too loudly.

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